The hardest aspect of going to the gym isn’t lifting. It’s not the stairmaster. It’s not the pain. The hardest part is picking up the damn weight and getting under the damn bar. And Friday workouts suck the most. My last lift of the week is dumbbell lunges and I hate lunges. Right before those last lifts, I honest to God cannot see how I’ll finish them. In my mind, it’s 100% impossibility.
This afternoon, I’ll find myself staring down the gun barrel of lunges. And I’ll do my best to remind myself of what happened last Friday. “The set always get done,” I’ll think, hopefully, as I grip the dumbbells, “if I just pick up the weight. Pick up the weight Ryan.”
My regrets haven’t come from failure. I’ve never felt shame because I only got seven reps when I planned to get eight. Nope, my regrets have come from my refusals to get under the bar, when I convinced myself that hardship was unnecessary.
We must continually pick up the weight that is the responsibility of who we are. We must begin the screenplay. We must ask the girl out. We must initiate the hard but vital conversation. It’s the simplest way to get the hard things done, and the hard things are where we feel most alive.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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